Breakfast at the hotel on Saturday was a little rough for everyone. They had delicious fresh fruit and juices and eggs, which made everything better. Best of all, we had a five hour bus tour planned for the afternoon. We got on the bus around 10:30, and we had a tour guide who was going to be spending the next two days with us. She was a really sweet woman from Barcelona. The only problem was that she decided to give all the tour to us in English. She had a really good vocabulary, it's just her accent was very thick (it was grueling to here all about the "Seeee-ty of Barce-LOH-na" all the time). Since we were indeed on a Spanish study abroad trip, I don't see why she couldn't have just given the tour in Spanish. It would have been honestly easier to listen to. Anyway, the bus tour was perfect because we got to see a lot of Barcelona (it's a huge city) as well as some of the areas on the outskirts of the city. Our first stop was a place called Mont Juic, which is a large hill near the coast. There was a nice park we stopped in to sight see for a little bit. It was funny to see how much La Sagrada Familia stood out in the skyline. We got back on the bus, and our next stop was the Olympic Stadium. This was really neat to see; Barcelona was surely an amazing host city, and the city benefited greatly in terms of the economy, so they were able to make tons of improvements with all the revenue. We drove down by the coast afterwards and saw the beaches and the famous "W" hotel.
Our last stop was in Gaudi's Park. As you may have guessed, Gaudi is Barcelona's favorite architect, and this park leaves no doubt as to why. All the walk ways and plazas are build right into the surrounding nature, and everything is super-modern. Most of the mosaics, which are absolutely stunning, are actually made from old tea cups and ceramic dishes. It was a beautiful day for the park, and I wish I would have had the opportunity to go back there and just relax. After the park, we were dropped off in La Plaza de Cataluña, which is the center of Barcelona... this was slowly becoming a common theme of the trip: Let's drop off all these students in a random square in Barcelona and have them find their way back to the hotel. Either way, we roamed around and found a nice restaurant to eat at: we were all starving (and exhausted). The food was really good, and the waiter was actually very friendly at this place. Afterwards we tried to make our way home by walking since we didn't want to pay for a taxi. Then, however, it started raining, so we hailed a taxi and headed for the hotel. Good thing too, because we were no where close. Once back in the hotel we literally slept... not napped, but slept. Until around 8.
Afterwards we pregamed up in Lauren and Sam's room (Vodka azul = Crunch berries in alcoholic liquid form), and then took our bus to Las Ramblas again. We found a great little restaurant, and a big group of us of 20 or so sat and a big long table upstairs. It was tons of fun, and the food was delicious. I got pork sausages and white beans... and a beer of course. After dinner, we blindly navigated the streets looking for a certain bar. Thanks to an iPhone, we found it. The bar was called "Dow Jones" and the gimmick went like this: they had a TV monitor that displayed all the prices of the drinks. However, according to supply and demand, the prices or "stocks" of each drink fluctuated. Turns out it was actually just really annoying to pay attention to the prices and you really only saved money if you drank stuff that no one else wanted... which surprisingly... no one wanted to drink. But the market "crashed" every hour or so. We pretty much stayed there all night since we didn't want to go all the way back to the port to a discoteca.
Me, Chris, Kara, and Andrea opted to take the metro home instead of paying for a taxi. Turns out the Barcelona metro at 4AM is only slightly sketchy. We made it home with only one minor delay involving some stairs (no one fell this time, quite different, actually) and since I had the key card that night, I went to my room and passed out.
Pictures of Day 2 are from the places mentioned above.
Hasta.
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